So the question remains: is advertising an art form meant to entertain the masses? Or is it meant to sell soap (or deodorant, as the case may be)?

In this troubled economic times, I vote for sales.

You?

In many marketing departments there is tension between advocates of branding and advocates of response advertising. At times it seems more ideological than logical.

Branding and response are on the same team
In our conversion rate optimization work, we find no divergence between branding and response. We’ve seen that the website that delivers on the expectations of your brand achieves higher satisfaction and conversion rates.

Unfortunately, graphic designers often use ‘the brand’ to mean ‘my artistic preference’, and the result is an artistically-clever but functionally-frustrating experience.

A recent published example brand-supported success is Business Objects’ conversion optimization case study, where they achieved a 32% lift while keeping within very strict brand standards guidelines.

Are you asking too much of your website?
Your website is not meant to define what your brand should be. Your website should deliver on the best expectations your customers have of you. If you think your website will have a strong influence in changing your brand perception, you will find yourself grasping for supporting evidence.

The brand is important – but only to achieve company goals
The brand clearly is an important factor in maximizing goals. What if we were to create a conversion funnel experience that exactly mimicked the ‘best practices’ of another company and was a proven top performer for them, but had a very different tone than your company’s? The visitor would have to battle cognitive dissonance all the way through the conversion funnel.

On episode #115 of the Across the Sound podcast, Joseph Jaffe asks, “When did branding become an end in itself rather than a means to an end?”

The website that takes advantage of conversion optimization principles as well as reflecting your brand essence will be the top performer.

However, with the due respect owed, I question one of her conclusions: “Who’s right and who’s wrong?” she writes. “Hate to say it, especially as a chief proponent of measurement in marketing, but brand should always win.”

Not so, Anne.

Brand is, after all, how your customers see you. It is the responsibility of marketers to help shape the customer’s view through a multiplicity of touch points and media that are all internally consistent (and let me make this clear: brand is not limited to a style sheet!). It is also marketer’s responsibility to monitor the changing needs of the marketplace – especially during a downturn in the economic cycle—and adjust to it.

If you are “A/B Testing” (and by that I hope she means any sort of statistically valid testing, not just A/B), the whole point is to stretch the definition of the brand and yet mitigate the risk of doing so.

If you have a strong brand and it is “soft and cuddly,” for example, and you develop an online promotion (banner ads, email, landing pages, etc) that is inconsistent with that positioning, a well executed testing strategy will reveal this gap: the results will be abysmal, but you will have minimized the risk of the promotion through testing.

On the other hand, if the new positioning speaks to the evolving needs of the marketplace, you will have achieved a tremendous breakthrough, with minimized risk.

In other words, brand should not “always win” – what should win is a properly thought out strategy that balances the defined brand with the changing needs of the marketplace and mitigates risk through measurement and testing.

In the end, however, I do agree with Anne’s last point: “Of course, the gold is having a strong brand with a team that’s able to A/B test, within guidelines, to improve results for it. That’s a company worth investing in.”

Let’s seek that “gold” in all our marketing activities!